Karaoke .

I was interested to hear that one of our pubs is to feature a karaoke session on Street Market night. Karaoke , as far as I know, never seems to have had the same popularity in Silverton that it seems to have had elsewhere. When I lived in Prestwick in the mid nineties, my local, the Toll Bar, regularly used to have Karaoke sessions on a sunday afternoon featuring Captain Karaoke. The captain was in real life, a bloke called Andy Bryden who, with his wife, ran an agency that provided party entertainment that included one of his mates who would appear as Chuck the Chicken. Bryden, who was in many ways a fairly obnoxious fellow, later went on to have walk on parts in some minor Hollywood films and was last seen as an extra in the scottish soap 'River City'. The Karaoke performers at the Toll Bar included one girl who was an extremely good singer who unfortunately had a repotoire consisting of one song, the Patsy Cline classic 'Crazy'. Some of the other performances were so horrendous that they made some of the worst contenders on 'Britain's Got Talent'sound wonderful. How they ever had the nerve to appear in public was beyond me, but then, some people dont seem to be able to help themselves if there is a microphone about and they take a drink or two too many.

So when Street Market rolls around lets hope that those who feel moved to sing will have a repotoire of more than one song and will at least try to avoid frightening all the dogs and the elderly for miles around. Perhaps they will improve their chances of getting away with it though if they perform dressed as Chuck The Chicken.